


Put Roses on Your Grave

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [38]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Found Families, M/M, Mother's Day, Past Abuse, past suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 14:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14620812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Turles hates this so-called “holiday.”  Mother’s Day is a sham created by greeting card and flower companies.  He hates everything surrounding it.or"the gang navigates mother's day when nearly all of them have a lot of deep-seated issues involving their parents"





	Put Roses on Your Grave

**Author's Note:**

> [AU timeline](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/post/166537761367/since-after-the-first-few-the-fics-in-rock-band)

Lapis walks out of the bedroom, not used to being up after his boyfriend.  Usually, when he spends the night, he wakes up at a reasonable hour and Raditz is still dead to the world.  Today, he woke up at a reasonable hour to find that he was nowhere to be found.

That is until now when he finds him at what the people who live in this apartment consider a kitchen table.  The table is a table in the academic sense but he’s never seen anyone actually eat at it. It’s usually stacked with notebooks, flyers from shows they attended, and other little bits of trash.  Supposedly the state of the table was even worse when Vegeta still lived here but Lapis honestly can’t imagine it being any  _ more _ cluttered.

At this moment, a good amount of the clutter has been stacked and a space has been cleared.  Raditz stands (stands because they  _ don’t have chairs _ and so Lapis doesn’t know why they  _ have _ a table) with his brother, both of them hunched over the table and laughing.

He gets closer and sees that they’re bent over a piece of construction paper.  Various craft supplies surround them on the table. Currently, Kakarrot is carefully drawing a design in glue.

“What’s this?”

There’s no answer at first.  Raditz tips a shaker of glitter onto the paper and taps the bottom on the table to get rid of the excess.  Lapis leans over Kakarrot’s shoulder since he’s closer in height to him and, thus, easier to peer over to see what they’re doing.  It looks like a card. A vase is cut out of purple construction paper and glued to the red paper and a glitter stem with leaves protrudes from it.  At the top pom-poms and silk petals are glued to complete the look of flowers.

“What’s this?” he repeats.

Raditz turns, apparently just noticing him, and leans in to kiss him good morning.

“It’s a card,” Kakarrot says, stating the obvious.

“I can see that.  What’s it for?”

Kakarrot seems confused.  He glances sideways at his brother before he answers.

“Mother’s Day.  It’s on Sunday.”

Oh.

Lapis can’t remember the last time he spoke to his mother.  He was still in the hospital when she first announced she was leaving their father and she packed up and left while he was at one of his group meetings.  He’s never been bothered by it. Both of his parents are fairly awful and he and his sister have always been better on their own. She hasn’t called them and neither he nor Lazuli have called her.  It’s better this way.

“Wanna see the inside?”

Without waiting for an answer, Kakarrot flips the card open.  Glued inside is a photograph of Raditz and Kakarrot as children.  They’re with their parents on the beach and he sees, just for the first time, how young they were.  Gine is shading her eyes and smiling, her other arm wrapped around Kakarrot’s torso. He’s nearly blurry, clearly about to move just as the picture is taken.  Bardock has a hand resting on Raditz’s head and an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear.

“Isn’t a homemade card kind of…” He isn’t sure what to say so he changes it to, “You’re both in your twenties.”

Raditz shrugs.

“Yeah, but that’s how it is.  When we were little, my mom always banned bought gifts so we would get together and make her a card.”

“Why did she ban bought gifts?”

“Because we were poor,” Kakarrot says simply. “She didn’t want us spending what little money we got on her.  Which, of course, we totally would.”

“We thought this card would remind her of the dinky ones we’d make her as kids.”

Kakarrot nods in agreement.

“Plus, we got her nice earrings, which we always wanted to do.”

It’s incredibly touching to hear.  He’s never really had a maternal relationship and so has never missed one.  He would see mothers on TV and think “Oh, that’d be nice,” but he knew he’d never have it.  His parents were cold.

“You’re coming with us to my parents’ on Sunday, right?” Raditz asks, his voice dragging him from his thoughts.

Lapis nods. “Of course.”

The more he’s been around, the more he feels at home with the Sons.  It’s like being a part of a real family. It’s nice.

“Chi-Chi’s mom died when she was little and also she’s a mom so, like, we’re celebrating her, too.”

As always, Kakarrot has a way with words.  Lapis looks back at the card and nods. He’s long since made peace with his relationship with his parents but something about the picture inside the card makes him long for something he never had.

\--

_ Celebrate mom with this-- _

Turles tears the ad out of the music magazine he’d been reading and spits his gum out into it.  He hates this so-called “holiday.” Mother’s Day is a sham created by greeting card and flower companies.  He hates everything surrounding it. The posts about how if you don’t love your mother, you’re garbage because of everything she’s done for you.

He snorts at that thought.

Everything she’s done for him.  Yeah, he has the scars from that.  Little circular burns on his arms and neck from her cigarettes.  What  _ has _ his mother done for him other than make him feel miserable?  He  _ knows _ he wasn’t wanted and if he didn’t, she was sure to remind him.  As a child, his solace was going over to Raditz’s trailer and spending time with a real family.  One he could pretend he was a part of. His grandmother was the only one who gave a shit about him.  When she died, he’s sure part of him died with her.

“Broles, I know your dad’s the worst, but what’s your mom like?”

Broly looks up from the thick-looking book he’s reading and blinks at him.

“Huh?”

“Your mom.  Is she shitty?”

He seems to ponder this for a moment and then says, “I think she might be, but she lives on the other side of the country so it isn’t as bad.  She’s nice when she calls me, at least. Twice a year.”

That’s not terrible, but it’s still not ideal.  Turles crumples the ad in his hand and frowns down at his closed fist.  An idea begins to formulate in his head and he jerks his head back up.

“Broles!”

Broly looks startled for a moment and confusion creases his face.

“What?”

He tosses the ad in the general location of where the trashcan might be and draws up close to him.

“What if you, me, and anyone else we know who has similarly shitty parental situations go out for lunch on Sunday?  Something chill.”

“Oh.” He pauses and seems to think it over. “I’ll call Kale.”

He grins and Broly chances a smile back.  As usual, he’s surged with the impulse to kiss him but this is always the one impulse he can tamp down.  It’s killing him, but he has to wait for Broly to be ready. It’s not like he’s hurting for sex or anything, anyway.  That, he’s fine. It’s this crush (or something more) and he’ll wait for that.

“Great,” he says after a moment. “It sounds fun, yeah?”

Broly gives him a genuine smile and says, “It actually does.”

\--

Vegeta can’t believe he’s doing this.  It’s all Bulma’s fault, of course. She’s finally needled out of him that he’s never done this before so while she’s taking Trunks to visit her parents and sister on mother’s day, he’s parking his car outside of a cemetery on the North Side.  He stands in front of the open gate, sucking hard on the remains of his cigarette and wondering if he should have brought flowers or some shit. Maybe a bouquet of those expensive lilies she grew obsessive over near the end.

Shit.

He stubs his cigarette out on the sidewalk and stares at the rusted, wrought iron gate.  On either side of it was a graffiti-splattered stone wall. Living in the city and avoiding going home at any cost, he’s forgotten how shitty things are back home.  Shouldn’t cemeteries have people who come and fix things up? But what the fuck does he know?

Vegeta digs his hands in the pockets of his jacket and scowls down at his feet as he walks in.  Part of him thinks this could have been avoided if he just went with Bulma but his disinterest in visiting his non-in-laws (her words, not his) prompted her to question about whether or not he’s ever visited his mother’s grave and.  He  _ can’t _ lie to her.  Like not even the fact that he doesn’t want to.  It’s the fact that he simply  _ can’t. _  It’s like she stares down into his fucking soul.

It’s warm out, but he feels a chill that makes him flip the collar of his jacket up.  He isn’t sure where the grave is, really. He doesn’t remember the funeral. His memory is extremely patchy between finding his mother’s body and breaking Zarbon’s nose two years later.

He finally finds it.  There aren’t any platitudes like “loving wife and mother,” or anything like that.  It lists her name, birth and death dates, and a quote from  _ Hamlet. _

He stares at it, hands in his pockets, feeling like a fucking moron.  He wants a cigarette. He wants to leave. Fuck this. Maybe he can still drive to Bulma’s parents’ house and suffer through her mom’s thinly veiled flirting.

“Hey,” he says.

No answer, of course.  Vegeta sits, not sure what else to do, and stares at the marble headstone.  Marble--who fucking paid for that? The theatre? Certainly not his father, as much as he liked to pretend they still had money.

“I still have the jacket,” he says. “It’s kind of gross now, but I have it.”

What to say?  He’s never questioned why his mother killed herself.  Why she would leave him and his brother. He’s been there.  After he was expelled, he almost did. Said he would give himself one day at his new school.  It had been as miserable as he had thought and he had been more determined to end it with every teacher who acted like he killed someone and every student who whispered about him in the halls.  And then, when he landed in detention, an annoying boy whose breath smelled like hot Cheetos sat next to him and talked to him like he was a person. Asked him to hang out. Told him his name was Kakarrot.

Not that he’s ever  _ told  _ him that befriending him (and, through him, Turles and Raditz) stopped him from killing himself.  That’s too embarrassing.

Fuck.

“So.  Bulma made me do this,” he says.  Pauses. “That’s my girlfriend. Partner.  Whatever. We’re together. As long as she’ll have me, I guess.”

Vegeta scowls and reaches for a cigarette.  Retracts his hand at the last moment.

“I have a son--I mean, you’re a grandma.  Nonna. Surprise, I guess.” He thinks, for a moment, of taking out his phone and showing her a picture but decides against it. “His name’s Trunks.  He’s two and a half. He likes to watch this show about a toy doctor and he tries to eat my picks.”

He still feel foolish, doing this, but better--somehow.

“I’m in a band.  We’re getting kind of famous.  It’s fucking weird. We’re putting out an album soon.  Here.”

This time he does take his phone out and pulls up one of their songs on Bandcamp.

“I know you liked this kind of music,” he says. “Dad hated it.  Hates it. We don’t really talk.”

He tries to think of anything else to say, but he can’t.  He lets his phone play the song out and closes the app before the next one can begin.

He gets to his feet and, after a moment’s hesitation, he puts his hand on the sun-warmed marble.

“I guess...Happy Mother’s Day,” he says finally. “Rest in peace.  If you can.”

\--

He forgets how  _ loud _ it is in the Son household.  The trailer is small but everyone’s personalities are so big that voices bounce off of the walls.

He sits on the couch, not sure where he fits in.  Christmas was fine, but Mother’s Day is for mothers and he’s what to Gine?  Her son’s boyfriend? Chi-Chi is Kakarrot’s fiancée and she’s been part of the family for years.  Plus, she’s a mother, too, so this day is equally for her. Lapis just feels weird and apart from it, sitting on the couch.

Even as kids, it’s not like he and Lazuli celebrated their mother.  She always seemed to see them more as burdens than children. Apparently, as his father said, his hospitalization was the last straw for her.  She didn’t want the “drama” of raising children and left. His family barely celebrated birthdays. Once, his father tried, but neither he nor their mother showed up, leaving he and Lazuli in the care of their far more accommodating classmates’ parents.

Last year, Krillin and Raditz worked together to do something sweet for their birthday and he had been so taken aback that someone would do that for him--them both.

So here he sits, a bottle of beer soaking his hand in condensation, watching the Sons all try to talk over one another.

“I remember this trip,” Gine says, holding the card to her chest and smiling. “Our first one.”

She loops her arms around her sons’ necks and pulls them close.

“We also got you earrings,” Kakarrot says.

“I like the card better.”

Raditz rolls his eyes. “Okay, then we’ll take ‘em back.”

Gine gasps dramatically. “Don’t you dare.”

Chi-Chi is similarly impressed with the necklace Gohan and Goten made for her.  It’s a hideous thing of mismatched beads and sloppy knots but she puts it on anyway.

“And Goten only ate a few beads while we were making it,” Gohan says proudly.

Chi-Chi lowers her hands from fastening the necklace. “Goten ate what now?”

Lapis rolls the bottle between his hands, trying to get a lock on what he’s feeling.  He’s usually sure of himself so this is unfamiliar ground. Last year, he and Raditz still weren’t in this place with their relationship.  He had met his parents once or twice when he was invited along to their Friday night dinners, but never included in celebrations. They’re serious now, in it for the long haul.  Maybe he should get used to this. Learn to change his way of thinking? To what? Realizing that he’s part of a family now? More than just him and his sister and 16?

Bardock comes to sit next to him, his own beer in hand.

“I take it Mother’s Day is weird for you, too, huh?” he asks in that drawling way of his.

Lapis turns to look at him.  He’s never really gotten that close of a look at Bardock.  He looks like Kakarrot, of course, down to the slope of his nose and the set of his chin.  He doesn’t see much of Raditz in him except maybe around the eyes?

“Is it?” he asks.

“For me, it’s always been.” He takes a pull from his bottle of beer and turns to look at him. “Radi ever tell you about my mother?”

He shakes his head. “He told me about his grandfather.  The one who died.”

Who Gohan is named after.  He’s seen pictures of him up in the trailer, but he can’t help but notice how he looked nothing like Bardock or his grandsons.

“Gohan adopted me,” he says. “When I was three.  Never knew my real dad and my mom? She abandoned me at a bus stop.”

He says it simply, but there’s still a measure of hurt there, all these years later.

“I don’t remember much except being thirsty and trying to sit still.  Thinkin’ if I was good then she’d come back.” He takes another pull on his bottle. “So I hated Mother’s Day.  In school, I used to throw tantrums whenever we’d have to draw cards or write poems and Gohan’d have to come in and explain the situation.”

Lapis thinks of his own situation.  In art class, he and his sister would convince the teachers to let them make just one card and then they’d throw it out before they went home.  Maybe it’s the same.

“I didn’t really stop hating it until there was a mother to celebrate,” Bardock says and gestures with the neck of his bottle towards Gine. “I think...when was it?  I think Radi was about seven months old? Timing’s about right. I had just turned sixteen anyway, I think. But we were walking with him through somewhere downtown and saw all the advertisements for Mother’s Day and I felt all that bitterness and then I looked at Gine and my boy and realized I had my own family now.”

And isn’t that just what he was thinking?  Having a new family and being included. Lapis looks at him, unsure of what to say.

“Look.  I’m saying all this mushy crap because I want you to know you’re family now.  I’ve never seen Radi as happy as when he’s with you. Even when he and Turles  _ weren’t _ arguing, he never looked as happy.  Okay?”

He nods, unsure what to do with his information.

“What did you do, then?” he asks. “When you realized you had a family?”

Bardock shrugs. “Gohan watched Radi and I took Gine out to this disgusting seafood restaurant overlooking the shore.  So now, when we can, we’d go out for seafood every Mother’s Day. We’re leaving in about twenty minutes, by the way.”

He says it so simply that Lapis has to smile.  He doesn’t mind being in their family. He catches Raditz’s eye and he gives him a smile.  Lapis returns it, tipping his bottle towards him.

“To the same place?” he asks.

Bardock snorts. “Fuck no.  The health department shut that place down years ago.”

\--

When Turles invited everyone, he had one thought in mind and it was not to turn the lunch outing into a group therapy session of everyone airing their grievances about their shitty parents.  It’s to get everyone’s  _ mind _ off of this preconceived notion that you have to love your mother unconditionally on this grandom, greeting card holiday in the month of May.

And it’s worked.

Everyone he invited seems pretty happy.  Caulifla is arguing goodnaturedly with Yamcha about some band he likes and she doesn’t and Kale and Broly are having an intensely deep discussion about something to do with Pokemon.  He’s even managed to get Lazuli to come.

“This is pretty nice,” she says in that deadpan way of hers that makes it nearly impossible to discern her actual tone. “The deli, I mean.”

Turles shrugs.

“It’s nearby and I know I can eat here.  Figured everyone else would like it, too.”

Lazuli bobs her head and pokes at her whitefish salad.

“It’s cool of you to do this,” she says after a moment’s silence. “I always thought you were kind of a tool, but you’re alright.”

He dimples a grin at her and rakes a hand through his hair.

“Don’t let it get around.  It’ll ruin my reputation.”

Lazuli rolls her eyes but makes a zipping motion over her mouth.  He turns his attention away from her to look at Broly since his eyes have apparently minds of their own and can never just allow him a moment to himself.  He looks happy--or as happy as Broly can look--talking to Kale. He catches him looking and flashes a shy, gentle smile. Turles responds with a laconic salute and goes back to his food.

\--

It’s after sunset when Bulma gets back to the apartment.

“Daddy!”

Trunks pelts towards him, nearly running headfirst into the body of his guitar.  He has vivid memories of their first tour and his fist going through Kakarrot’s guitar so he moves the instrument aside at the last moment so his son’s head doesn’t meet the same fate as his apparently permanently scarred right hand.

Trunks wraps his arms around him, pressing his cheek against his denim clad thigh.

“How were your parents?” he asks even though, honestly, he doesn’t really care.

“Fine,” Bulma says.  She comes to sit next to him on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her. “They asked after you but I told them this holiday isn’t your...thing.”

He snorts.  That’s an understatement.  Bulma reaches out to tease the hairs at the back of his skull.

“So...did you?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

He shrugs, plucking a random chord on the guitar.

“It was weird.  I didn’t think I’d get ‘closure’ anything like that but it still felt weird.”

She nods and cuddles closer.  Trunks is climbing up on him and he has to put his guitar aside to allow him the proper space to curl up.  He  _ should _ feel claustrophobic, but he doesn’t.  Today’s been weird, but this is good.

“Do you think she’d like me?” Bulma asks. “Your mom, I mean.”

He thinks about it for a moment.  Vegeta’s never really thought about how his life would differ if his mom was still alive.  She was so gone near the end, that she was almost unrecognizable from the woman who made the theatre company put her young son in shows.  The woman who called him her little prince.

“She was Italian so she’d hate you for taking me away from her but love you as a person.”

Bulma laughs.

“So.  Do you have any other--”

“No,” he says brusquely, cutting her off. “I’m about at my limit for today.”

She looks taken aback but then nods.

“Got it.” She smiles down at Trunks and adds, “Why don’t we give this stinky boy a bath and put him to bed?”

“I not stinky!” Trunks says adamantly.

“Oh?” She looks at him. “Babe?  Be the judge?”

Vegeta bends down and sniffs the top of his head.

“He reeks.”

Trunks lets out a wild squeal as he scoops him up and, together, they all walk into the bathroom.


End file.
